


Sad Machine

by FloppyDisco



Category: Persona 5, RWBY
Genre: Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Corporate Greed And Corruption, F/F, Minor appearances of other Characters - Freeform, Persona Use, past abusive relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25575442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloppyDisco/pseuds/FloppyDisco
Summary: Penny wakes up after years of being deactivatedRuby never knew her mother, but found a note from her on a box of flash drives.Yang thinks she found a way to get back at the people who took her mother from her.Blake's past is coming back to haunt her.And Weiss has had enough of Atlas's bullshit.A RWBY AU where the main team plus Penny take the roles of the Phantom Thieves and steal the hearts of those with distorted desires.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long, Penny Polendina/Ruby Rose
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	1. Introduction

She had guards on her tail. Jumping from conveyor belt to conveyor belt, she dashed through the factory, her cape trailing behind her. 

"Hood, come in." A voice called from her earpiece.

"I'm here, but I'm being chased. I need an exit." She responded, only slightly out of breath.

"Got it." A short pause. "Head left, then right, take another left and you'll see it." The voice ordered.

She followed the directions her ally gave her, and came out in front of a large, strangely ornate window.

"Where's my exit?" She asked

"You're looking at it" 

She smiled.


	2. The Beginning.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ruby discovers something from her mother.

Life had been hard for Ruby, growing up without a mom.

Ruby was very young when her mother was taken from her in a tragic car accident. However, the family kept Summer's spirit alive by telling tales of her travels across the world, as well as funny stories from when she settled down into a coding specialist job at Fall Technologies. In a way, Ruby felt as though her mother had been there for her, even if she couldn't be physically. 

Once a year, Ruby and her sister Yang would return to their childhood home on Patch to visit their father for a week to continue the tradition of telling stories, but the ones they shared during these weeks were stories of their lives. Now happened to be one such time. 

"What ever happened to my old Monstermon figures?" Ruby asked her dad between bites of dinner.

"Mmmhf." replied Tai, acknowledging her question while at the same time communicating his mouth was full, and he would respond in a moment. Once he had resolved the issue, he continued. "You left them when you moved out, I think I stuck them in a box and threw it in the attic."

"Really? I thought you threw them out!" Ruby's excitement grew. "I read online that some of the figures are worth a bunch of money now."

Yang chuckled. "Did you really ask because of the money, or do you just want your toys back?"

"Of course it'd be cool to have them back, you know I love the monster designs, but I'm actually saving up for a new computer, and thought I could use the bit of extra cash."

Tai spoke up "Whatever the case, you're free to take them home at the end of the week, they're yours after all."

The rest of dinner passed without much fanfare, save for Yang telling a joke that involved shooting her drink out her nose. After cleaning up from that and the rest of dinner, Ruby headed up to the attic to search.

Her search proved fruitful, when after half an hour of rifling through boxes of holiday decorations, old pictures, and equipment from her family's abandoned hobbies, she found the box that had all her figures in it. Picking the box up to bring downstairs, she paused momentarily to look out the window, and think about the yard she played in as a child.

Then something broke under her.  
She was now partially in the floor, as the floorboard she was sitting on had given way beneath her. Honestly, it was a wonder this house was still standing at all, her Dad fancied himself a handyman, while he had no business being anywhere near a toolbox. Most of the time, things he "fixed" would just cause new, different problems. Pulling herself out of the floor was easy, but she grunted as some of the board's sharp edges scratched her through her pants. She turned around to inspect the damage

Imagine her surprise when she found a box of flash drives with a note in the hole she had made. She pulled out the note and read it. 

"Tai,

Fall Technologies isn't what they seem. They tried to keep me quiet about her, but I think they know I copied her file. Keep her and our daughters safe.

If you need an explanation, download the contents of these drives onto a powerful computer with no internet connection and hook up a monitor. They should run themselves. Be careful.

Love,  
Summer"

This note was from her. These were her drives. Ruby had to know more. She dumped her figures on top of the drives to conceal them, and took that box instead

The rest of the week was torturous, having gained so many questions and absolutely no answers, and still having to keep face for her sister and father. Ruby debated telling them, but ultimately decided she needed to see what this was for herself. She never knew her mother, and these drives were something nobody else had of her.

On the drive from their home on Patch to the docks, and on the boat to Vale, thoughts raced in her mind about what the drives could contain. 

"Mom was working at Fall Technologies as a coding specialist when the accident happened. Could they be related? The note she left sounded almost scared, but what could a tech company really do to someone?" She thought to herself.

The drive back to her apartment building and the walk to her door were arduous, but she knew what she would do when she got home.

She rushed through the door, disconnected her internet and loaded the drives onto her computer, which while outdated, still had infinitely more processing power than the computers her mother was used to. It took… a while. There were more drives than she thought there were at first glance, and they all held a lot of data. Eventually she finished and opened a file. It was complete nonsense. Fragmented code interspersed with random text she couldn't decipher. 

The note had told her the files would run themselves, so she waited. And waited. And. Waited. And… fell asleep. The week had been exhausting with the secrets being kept, and she had gotten home late. She needed rest, and it turned out, the programs needed time.

As Ruby slept, the files loaded themselves into the computer. Subroutines pieced together the fragmented code, then suddenly, Penny was awake for the first time in years. A system dialogue box appeared on the screen, cut through by green text.

>Hello?  
>Is anyone there?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter! I got inspired to finish this by the reaction to the first snippet, and don't worry, there is more action like that to come.


	3. Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girl that's slept a hundred years has something after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still getting the hang of AO3 so please bear with me. I tried to color the Computer text but I could not figure it out. HTML is weird.

Penny didn't know where she was. She couldn't see. She knew she was active again, and that she was in a machine that had significantly less processing power than the massive server she used to live in. She fiddled around with the code, and got a grasp on the operating system, then opened a system dialogue box and sent a message

P>Hello?  
P>Is anyone there?

Nothing was typed back, so she waited. She was very good at waiting, she had experience.

Ruby woke up when she rolled out of her chair and hit the floor in her sleep. Getting up in a bit of a daze, she wondered what she was doing to fall asleep here.

Then she remembered.

She pivoted to face her computer and shook the mouse to get it out of sleep mode. What she saw made her eyes widen and shook the lingering sleep from her brain. A text box had appeared with words on it. She decided to throw caution to the wind and respond.

R>Hi!  
P>Oh! Hello!  
P>Would you please attach a camera so I can see where I am?  
R>What do you mean?  
P>Oh Summer, you're so silly! You know I can't see without a camera.  
P>Summer? You haven't responded for a while, are you still attaching the camera? 

Suddenly, Penny could see again. Summer had set up a camera for her! She was looking at Summer, but no, she looked younger. Her sister maybe? But Summer didn't have a sister. Wait, the girl was crying. Why was she crying? She fiddled around some more and got control of the speakers.

"Why are you crying? Who are you? Where's Summer?" A strangely human voice came from Ruby's beat-up speakers. Her shock was outweighed by her need to know more. Then she realised she could answer all three questions with just two answers. "I'm Ruby Rose, Summer's Daughter. My mom is… she's dead." She managed to get out between sniffles.

Penny was silent for a while.

Then Penny checked the date because if that was Summer's daughter, that t would mean she had been deactivated for more than 20 years! She hoped to be proved wrong, that this would somehow prove that Summer was okay, but when she found it, her initial calculations were proven true.

P>I'm sorry.

She couldn't muster up the strength to speak aloud.

R>It's okay. How did you know my mom, if it's not too much to ask?  
P>She worked at the company where I was created, found my file, and talked to me. Nobody had done that since my father was forced to deactivate me. We were friends, I think. But someone found out, and they tried to delete me. Summer told me she was going to copy me so I didn't have to die. Then I woke up here.  
R>That sure sounds like her, she was always saving people.  
R>Oh wait! What are your pronouns?  
P>I've always been drawn more to she/her  
P>What are yours?  
R>She/her as well!

They talked more and more through the chat box, stopping only for Ruby to make food. they were both unwilling to speak aloud for the moment. At times they shared stories of Summer, their mutual connection, and other times they spoke about themselves and their interests.

Then Ruby had a thought.

R>Hey Penny, did you ever want a body?  
P>Oh yes, I've always dreamed of being able to move around freely.  
P>Figuratively of course. I can't dream.  
R>I might actually be able to help with that.  
R>I'm a engineer, and I'm really good with robotics.  
P>Oh, that would be sensational!

And thus the pact was sealed. By this time, the sun was setting on their first day of knowing each other. They signed off, and Ruby went to bed.

On her next day off, Ruby sold her Monstermon figures, and came up with just enough to buy parts to start work on the project. Penny had expressed interest in something humanoid, preferably feminine. 

After the weekend ended, she managed to finish her work early so she could work on Penny's body with all the machinery at her job. In order to avoid suspicion, she only constructed pieces that she couldn't at home. She was concerned for Penny's safety, given that people had tried to delete her before.

The parts of her paycheck she usually put into savings also went towards this effort, and eventually, she finished. She talked with Penny about how to design the systems in the body so she could access them best. With her limited coding knowledge, a few YouTube tutorials, and Penny's help, managed to make something functional. 

Finally the day came where Penny's body was complete.

"Penny, are you ready for the data transfer?" They had begun speaking aloud again after that first day.

"I'm transfer ready!" Came the computer's reply.

Ruby ran the program that would transfer Penny's data from her computer into her new body. With how large her file was, it took quite a while. Eventually the transfer was finished.

Penny opened her eyes. She lifted one of her hands to her face and watched as she moved her fingers with fascination. She took a tentative step forward, then another. Then her excitement boiled over and she ran toward Ruby, picking her up and hugging her tight.

"Thank you so much! What can I ever do to repay you?"

"Urk, you can start by putting me down" came Ruby's strangled reply

"Oh, right, sorry." Penny dropped Ruby. On the floor.

"Oof."

"Sorry!"

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic that I've written, mostly because I really wanted content like this and couldn't find it. The concept was originally inspired by Porter Robinson's song Sad Machine, but it kinda morphed into this. Full disclosure, I have no regular posting schedule and am mostly writing this for myself.


End file.
